


Faster Than Light

by fandomscolliding



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Kid Flash - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 17:38:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomscolliding/pseuds/fandomscolliding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You didn’t quit being a superhero. Sure, you hung up the cape, stopped going on missions, let other people risk their lives and watched people take bullets that were meant for you. But the life never left you. You still had the scars, knotted and pink like a new wound or white like ghost’s writing on your skin. You still woke up in a cold sweat, remembering friends you’d seen ripped apart in front of you, the faces of the civilians you couldn’t save, buildings and kingdoms and worlds burned to ashes even as you did everything you could to put out the fires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faster Than Light

You didn’t quit being a superhero. Sure, you hung up the cape, stopped going on missions, let other people risk their lives and watched people take bullets that were meant for you. But the life never left you. You still had the scars, knotted and pink like a new wound or white like ghost’s writing on your skin. You still woke up in a cold sweat, remembering friends you’d seen ripped apart in front of you, the faces of the civilians you couldn’t save, buildings and kingdoms and worlds burned to ashes even as you did everything you could to put out the fires.

For Wally, it was also a sort of physical thing. He could sometimes feel the Speed Force calling to him, luring him into its embrace. It would creep up on him, unexpected and unpredictable; he’d be in class, tapping his pen and wondering if Artemis preferred roses or something more exotic when suddenly, he would feel a pull in the center of his chest like an explosion of energy and light and his heart would pick up and he’d need to do something, anything to release the energy building up, so he’d tap his foot against the floor so fast it blurred or he’d rap out a message with his fingertips against his jeans, the friction etching holes like cigarette burns through the fabric and leaving little scars behind. And in the darkness, when the moon fell across Wally’s legs, having kicked off the covers hours ago in a fit of nightmare movement, they’d wink like a secret and a promise and black temptation.

Sometimes, though, sometimes it would be too much, and no amount of tapping or twitching would be enough to silence the whisper that threaded through his veins, and he’d feel the Speed Force like a virus in his blood, his cells and molecules and atoms humming and moving, vibrating at frequencies he never thought he’d be able to reach. Times like those, he’d have to get out and run.

He’d go around the world, across the seas, over the frozen edges of the earth. And he’d let himself—just for a moment—remember what it used to be like, how it felt to have wind whipping through his hair, cool and crisp and alive as he breathed it in. Wally would run so fast he’d be nothing but a blur at the corner of your vision, a flash of lightning, here one moment, and gone the next, so fast you’d wonder if it was even there, if it ever even existed.

Times like those, he felt like he was a part of the Speed Force in a way that even Barry didn’t understand. He thought that maybe he wasn’t just using it, in it, but that he was the Speed Force, that nothing but energy like quicksilver flowed through him, replacing blood as it beat through his heart. Times like those he felt like he’d fly apart, become nothing but a streak of light crashing through the heavens. He thought that maybe he’d broken fundamental laws of physics, that he was, in fact, faster than light could ever dream of being.

You didn’t just quit being a hero. It was something that you were born with, it flowed through your veins and beat like war drums in your ears when you ran. You were a hero because you could never forget the faces of the people you couldn’t save, because you’d seen too many brothers in arms die without you, because it wrote itself in blood across your soul.

So Wally came back, and he ran. But he wasn’t fast enough, he wasn’t as fast as the others. And they were losing no matter what they did. So he did what he sometimes did: he let himself go. He could feel the Speed Force grow like a scream and a roar, a nuclear bomb exploding into light in his chest. He closed his eyes and said his farewells as energy like mercury, silver and deadly, burned away his blood with each beat of his heart. And for the first time in a long time and for the last time ever, he wasn’t just using speed, he was the Speed Force itself, he was burning fire arcing across the clouds, he was flying apart and becoming what light only wished it could be.


End file.
